Missing Parts
by Felinis
Summary: How to describe it was difficult to impossible because they weren't sure what it was that had caught them. It called itself a Craftsman and a Collector. Said it liked pretty things- said they were pretty. There's a mountain of uncertainty on how they reached this point and how they'll escape- if they escape.


**Felinis: look before you ask or read and go Fel wtf was this, idk. I really don't know. I don't know what this is. I don't even remember writing it. I just know it's been sitting in the documents folder and it says whump day 2**

How to describe it was difficult to impossible because they weren't sure what it was that had caught them. It called itself a Craftsman and a Collector. Said it liked pretty things- said they were pretty. There's a mountain of uncertainty on how they reached this point and how they'll escape- if they escape.

Whatever it was the creature was spindly with bones bore open to the public that were thin as needles and white as bleached flour. Hands both long and short at the same time with clawed ends that scraped along the walls of the cave that were littered in what would have been called copses if not for the fact that the parts still moved and twitched. The mouths still screamed and the organs pulsed with the bodies still breathing and looking at them with a quiet understanding that was both sorrowed and resigned as if to say:

"Oh, I guess it's their turn."

The actual body was hard to make out as the thing seemed covered in a cloak of feathers, scales, hair, fur, children's toys, and spools of thread. A tangled mass of everything and nothing that covered its massive frame almost everywhere but its skeletal hands and feet. It had a voice that was far too normal for their comfort when it opened its mouth, if there was a mouth, to speak. It was not deep but not light. Something in the middle that made the thoughts of late night melodies and cold sonnets come to mind when it spoke in the darkness of its lair.

What called them in hand been missing person reports, stolen items, pets that had vanished in the night, and the growing fear of the townsfolk that nobody was safe from this blight. It was all understandable and rational as something to fear and the knights had yet to have luck so they set out for help from the guilds. It was understandable. It was normal. Against this thing, though it was irrelevant.

Because this thing lived outside rational thought and in-between the corners of nightmares.

In the end, Brave Vesperia- the knights- the few civilians who came to point the way were all slated to end up here. Wherever here was.

The incidents had been occurring near Mantaic for months where at first they hardly thought anything about it. People would disappear, some children thought to have died in the desert or sand pits by accident along with pets which is cruel but true. Objects just vanish all the time without people noticing and nobody thinks much of it at all.

Then one day a scream was heard and a woman woke up with her eyes carved clean out her head like they were never there in the first place. She was still functioning and actually healthy without an ounce of pain, but the eyes were gone with no trace but the fleshy socket hole they belonged to. It started happening in other forms. Children waking up with no limbs, dogs with no heads that wandered aimlessly with a red stump of a neck. Men with no voices women missing emotion. The elderly missing their teeth and memories more than usual.

That part had been left out of the summons for help for reasons that seemed rather obvious in hindsight. Anyone's sense of danger would say to get the fuck out of a town where people were being dismembered but Brave Vesperia never backed down.

Not when the people lived in such fear.

A lead had come up that one of the villagers had brought to the knight's attention only hours before they arrived about a strange hole in the desert the man had stumbled upon by accident. He described it as:

"Like looking at a dream. Like- ya know that it's impossible. It should be impossible, but it's there. Just a crevice in a mountain that wasn't there. Black as night and just waiting for you to stare into it so that it can stare back."

So, Brave Vesperia set off along with five knights and three civilians who argued and pushed into coming along. At first, nothing had seemed off about the desert as they walked but then it became clear that the landscape was repeating- no more like condensing till it just appeared. A cave in the desert that shouldn't be. So black as pitch that it beckoned to be stared at and for people to enter.

"I welcome you." The cave said.

Which obviously meant they should enter with little caution to the wind other than a- "shouldn't someone stay out here?" or a- "What if we can't get out." That was met with someone choosing to stay outside and wait on their return and to anchor a rope for guidance. They should have been more cautious, but it's hard to be when faced with the unknown.

Men fear it but they are also endlessly entranced by it.

Their footsteps seemed to crunch every few steps and there was a sensation of the feeling they all felt they knew but didn't want to say out loud. Bones. The ground was littered in bones.

They should have turned back then but they didn't in fear of what lied further in. Who lied further in and if any were salvageable. They kept going and going further till the light of the entrance was a memory and the only things they could see were illuminated by the flickering torchlight.

"We should go back. The ropes done anyway." Someone had said but the thought was interrupted by the sound of something breaking. Something further down the tunnel and a soft hum filled the air. It wasn't jovial but it wasn't somber much like the pitch and tone of the voice. It was.

It just was. It became no question that they had to head down further into the cave. Not everything they'd been stepping on along the way had been bones but everything they saw jewels, toys, scrolls, junk. All of it was dry and gave the tone of a graveyard for forgotten items, but as they made their way to the humming the walls started to thrum. A sense that they were being watched from every angle or that they were not alone in that singular space.

Soft muttering and screams that were too close for comfort and the pulse of organs on the walls. Yuri knows that everyone almost vomited at the sight of corpse clapping jovially despite its entire chest cavity being exposed and the organ laid bear and beating with something, not life.

Why hadn't they turned back? They couldn't. Which meant they pressed onwards with an ever-looming dread that what they'd stumbled into might have been hell or if they hoped and prayed hard enough a nightmare.

The humming had turned to singing by the time they saw the great opening in the tunnel that stretched in a wall of darkness. The group stared at it hesitantly before one of the knights grit his teeth and stepped forward with his body swallowed by the void till everyone followed except Karol who's legs were shaking and tears had started pouring down his eyes.

"Karol, you okay?" It was a dumb question.

"Yuri… This place- it feels like it everything is alive. I know that's crazy but-" Yuri shushed him because in his experience saying horrors helps bring them to life.

"We'll be fine." They all took each other's hand and stepped further in to find soft yellow light from unseen sources and a river flowing through with a boat that seemed far too happy and whimsical for the atmosphere. It made their skin crawl with its gold scrolling of dancing eggbears, flowers, and butterflies but it was their way forward so they traveled unaware of the fact that it was only the Brave Vesperia crew that remained.

The scenery was horrifying yet monotonous for what felt like hours till a dock appeared in the distance. There was a strong part in all their minds trying to rationalize this as a dream but it was too removed. Too lost. All the same, they kept moving forward their torch long since extinguished.

That's when they noticed the walls turned from cluttered madness to a refinement like a gallery with large structures encased in the walls that moved on the inside. Monsters with human faces, whispers in the glass, limbs distorted to a point of hindering the body with their length, flesh melded with steel, trees made of flesh, flowers made of teeth.

It was beautiful-

It was horrifying.

And in the center perched by a large workbench taller than any of them by at least then feet was the Creator.

"What lovely guests I have this day." Its voice so soft it scratched the nerves of the group. "It gives me such joy when the right materials come to me." Whatever head it had under the cloak seemed to pop and turn to look at them.

Yuri put on the brave face and twirled his sword. "So you're the one causing all the back in Mantaic." He threw the scabbard in one second and was pressed up against a wall the next. He couldn't see its face but he knows that whatever this thing is staring at him with glee.

"Oh, yes. You'll look fine on my wall." It smiled even if he couldn't see and for once in his life, Yuri felt pure unfiltered fear because he suddenly could feel the very idea of what this thing was planning to do to him. Felt the phantom concept of how his flesh would be spliced and torn apart to be grafted onto something new. He screamed and flailed trying to get out of that thin hand for survival.

No! Eyes gouged out- It shushed and stroked his hair- Skin peeled- Why couldn't he run? Finger cut off on one hand- Was he sinking into the wall? It felt like his body was being sealed inside of hot wax as the thing pushed him further in.

"You really shouldn't fight it." A small voice says and there peaking out from under all the piles of antique children's toys and severed limbs to his left is a child's head. Big bug eyes staring at him tiredly and breathing out a sigh. "He'll tear you and your friends apart sooner or later. It's just what he does."

Well, screw that Yuri wants to live! So he fights vainly against his bindings trying desperately to break out and rescue himself or Karol. Judith- hell even Repede. Just one of them. The thing went off somewhere in a blur and he could hear things move and a shuffling as if it were looking for something and it's the only noise among them for hours. Everyone scared to open their mouth and talk lest it bring the thing back to them sooner.

Eventually, their mouths turn parched, the breath sour, the bodies sour, their minds weary. How long has it been? Days? It comes back dropping what looks like just another large pile of junk into the mix before rubbing his hands in anticipation like it's only been gone minutes. Maybe it has.

"Why?" They're not really sure who says it but it's the only other sound in the cave beside the thing's humming.

It holds a strange jar filled with what almost looks like a galaxy in its hand tapping it lightly with a smile. "If I were to say it's simply a necessary part of my artistic statement."

"Which would be?"

"That while there is beauty in everything it is imperfect," It glides to Yuri and plucks him from the wall before setting him softly on the bench. He tries to bend his limbs but can't, "That everything is missing something to become perfect. You'll understand once it's done that what I'm doing is for the best. You'll be a masterpiece that I will show to the world."

Yuri watched the needle-like finger glide across his skin bringing a sharp sting and blood. It was such a light touch yet every time there was fire and red till it became clear that his skin was being torn off in slices. It just kept moving without care and Yuri was aware through a haze of pain that had built that the fingers on his left hand had been cut at the second joint except for his pinky.

A femur was yanked from a leg and he screamed but it only hoped to distract him from his collarbone pulled out his body like it was nothing. This had to be a dream, right? No way he was actually going through this pain!

It kept going as his eyes were gouged out with a spoon and he watched his own skinless body as this thing worked away. He felt and saw his nose get sawed off with the grinding of the cartilage. Stared at his own pile of skin scraps and wondered what planned to do with him.

How the hell was he still alive?

It uncorked the bottle and it oozed down slowly onto the raw muscles and tendons as it coagulated and spread over the flesh like a plague. He felt the branches of something thrust into where his collarbone had been as they hardened in his flesh and dung their way till they were piercing his heart in on direction and sprouting upward towards the sky.

Suffocating beyond all belief was a good way to describe the feeling. Yuri knows Judith screamed at some point after the new fingers were being sewn on with needle thread. He's not sure if the femur is ever replaced but he knows that molten gold is being dumped onto his still exposed flesh.

Yuri tries to pass out. Tries to slip unconscious but he can't so he feels this new skin made of swirls of gold and whatever that starry liquid may be are sutured together. Notes that he can still feel the branches crawling through his skin and feel them bubble to the surface around the muscle and the tickling him with what he thinks are flower buds- he stopped being able to see after his eyes were ground up into a paste and stamped in the hollowed holes in his skull.

The thing never stops humming the whole time and with how delicate and careful the motions it really does seem like its form of an act of love. It doesn't stop the pain when it splits his tongue down the middle before calling him done but he is numb by that point to the action.

"Yes, how stunning!" But the joy in its voice stops there when Yuri is forced to sit up. "No-no, you are too vicious. I made you with serenity in mind." This was its idea of serenity? Destroying his body for an art project and make macabre figure out of it was its idea of serene! "Oh, no! Let's fix that rage, fear, and anger. Put it to good use elsewhere."

Its hand pokes softly at his in what seems like an attempt to caress but instead causes pain that slowly ebbs away into serenity. He's calm. Too calm and it should scare him but he doesn't feel it or- what was fear? There's a voice in the b ack of his head that say she should remember his fear. Focus on adrenaline and terror- He knows people are calling his name but he's so tired…

The thing set Yuri in what looked like a glass coffin and placed him proudly against the wall and tries to stay conscious of the black world around him but it's useless. He can't see and the void is welcoming so it takes him.

It goes for Judith next and it decides to completely tear apart her body and grinds it into paste and painting it delicately on a brass doll a that's good ten feet long with swirls and mandalas for hours before placing the only thing he save of her, the heart, inside its head pierced with needles with diamonds and other rare jewels at the tips.

The last is Karol and Repede who he tears like Papier-mâché and reconstructs around a carousel that he's building out of other children and cute creatures who wander too near. It must move before more waltz in for while the creature loves supplies there is such a thing as too much to work with. It'll hind somewhere green and full of nature.

As for the heroes who entered the cave:

They were never heard from again


End file.
